Cameroon 2018 Presidential Elections Results

The most ambiguous and emblematic October 7 Cameroon 2018 Presidential Election Results continues to saturate the media. The blogosphere, in particular, keeps boiling as event after event unfolds. Netkipedia News compiled excerpts of what other news organs had to say to help our readers grasp the truth in the so much controversial elections. It’s worth noting that the opposition and many independent observers continue to decry the despicable fraudulent practices that surrounded this election including threats of human life to some party representatives in and out of the country by the almost gone sour unpopular Biya regime.

Cameroon 2018 Presidential Elections Results

Here is what others have to say:

ABC News: Cameroon still awaiting presidential election results

Cameroon continues to wait for results of Sunday’s presidential election in which Africa’s oldest leader is widely expected to win.

Members of the Constitutional Council on Wednesday deliberated on incoming election results and heard complaints from lawyers for opposition parties.

While opposition leader Maurice Kamto has claimed victory, only the council can legally announce the winner. Official results must be announced by Oct. 22.

Council leader Essombe Emile says this is the first presidential election managed by the recently sworn-in body and “we want to expect that at the end of the day all Cameroonians will be happy with the way things went.”

Council members include high-ranking magistrates and members of 85-year-old President Paul Biya’s administration.

Biya, in power since 1982, is expected to enter a seventh seven-year term.

Greeted by screams from his supporters as he made the announcement, Kamto, who leads the Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC), called on President Paul Biya to hand over power peacefully.

“I invite the outgoing president to organize a peaceful way to transfer power,” he told a news conference in the capital Yaounde, giving no results to justify his claim.

The election was widely expected to extend the rule of Biya, one of Africa’s last multi-decade leaders who has held power for 36 years.

“My mission was to take a penalty. I did it and I scored,” Kamto said to chants of “freedom” by jubilant supporters in a courtyard outside. He offered no evidence to justify his claim to have won.

Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji said on Sunday that only the Constitutional Council would be allowed to announce results and that any form of challenge to the verdict would “not be tolerated”.

Maurice Kamto, a leading opposition challenger to President Paul Biya, claimed victory on Monday in Cameroon’s presidential election despite a government warning not to announce unofficial results.

The dramatic announcement by the candidate of the Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) follows Sunday polls marked by violence in restive anglophone regions, low turnout and difficulties staging the ballot in the conflict-torn north.

By law each polling station must submit its results, after verification by the Elecam electoral commission, to the Constitutional Court, which is responsible for announcing the final, official tally within 15 days.

“I was charged with taking a penalty, I took it and I scored,” said Kamto at a media conference in Yaounde.

“I have received a clear mandate from the people and I intend to defend it until the end,” he added.

“It is not right at all to announce this. He hasn’t won anything at all. It’s totally illegal,” he said, adding that it was too early to say if anyone had won.

A raft of unofficial results from Cameroon’s almost 25,000 polling stations have already begun to circulate on social media.

Ahead of Kamto’s declaration, Paul Atanga-Nji, the minister for territorial administration, called on “all the political players… to act responsibly so that the process concludes in the same spirit as it started”.

“Any attempt to disrupt public order will be handled thoroughly,” Atanga-Nji told FRANCE 24 on Monday.

Opposition candidates had called on their supporters to oversee the tallying process to prevent any fraud that might favour 85-year-old Biya’s quest for re-election.

“Times are tough. Rise up and prepare to defend your victory because there are some unbelievable things going on,” said outsider opposition hopeful, Cabral Libii, who at 38 was the youngest candidate.

Ahead of the polls, in which 6.5 million voters were eligible to cast ballots, Kamto warned he would “not accept any” result tainted by fraud.

‘No one came to vote’

Tensions were high during the vote and violence was reported in the anglophone regions that have been torn by a separatist insurgency that erupted a year ago.

After voting began Sunday, security forces shot dead three suspected separatists who had allegedly fired at passersby from a motorcycle in Bamenda, the main city in the English-speaking northwest region, a local official said.

In Buea, capital of the anglophone southwest, three separatists of the so-called Ambazonia Republic separatist movement were gunned down on Friday.

Gunfire was heard in the largely deserted town throughout polling day and a car belonging to the state-run Cameroon Tribune newspaper came under fire.

The violence in the anglophone regions has killed at least 420 civilians, 175 members of the security forces and an unknown number of separatists, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank.

“We’re bored because no one came to vote, people stayed at home because they’re scared,” said opposition election observer Georges Fanang in one of Buea’s polling stations.

Low turnout?

The army also confirmed that voting could not be held in at least one district of the southwest, Lysoka village, because of the insecurity.

“As expected, turnout in the English regions has been particularly low with virtually all the returns we have seen suggesting less than five percent,” said ICG analyst Hans de Marie Heungoup.

But in the far north region, considered a “key” to the election because of its large population, very few opposition election observers deployed to remote polling stations, witnesses said, raising fears of possible fraud.

The region has been rocked by violent attacks carried out by Nigeria-based Boko Haram jihadists despite US efforts to equip and trained Cameroonian forces.